Blame it on my spending my formative years in Texas and Oklahoma, but I have a soft spot for cowboys and the Wild West. The mystique of the wide open spaces, the near mythical figures that populated it resonate with me even now. And even though Science Fiction was my first love when it comes to genres, Westerns are an old friend I occasionally like to revisit. More importantly, they are part of our collective American psyche and understanding the truth behind them helps us to understand ourselves.
We’ve all heard of Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid, but I’d wager the majority of us know nothing about the range war that took place in Wyoming between settlers and cattle barons, or the dark life of “frontier hitman” Tom Horn. And even what we think we know, odds are it’s either incorrect or badly skewed by popular culture. When it comes to such a larger than life time as the Wild West, the myths and legends that endure tend to push the facts by the wayside, transforming men into archetypes and gun fights into epic battles between law and chaos.
This brief series from The History Channel attempts to peer beyond the myths and into the real people that fought, roamed, and died in these wide open spaces. Each episode tells the real story of famous people and events. In fact, four of the six episode titles begin with the words “The Real” followed by a person or event’s name, and from what I can tell, this series does a fine job of living up to that bold, definitive title.
I’m not a historian, so you may want to take my statements with a grain of salt. As much as I enjoy the Old West and the cowboy archetype, my experiences mostly fall in the fiction that this series is trying to correct—the westerns of John Ford, Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti westerns, Silverado, Lonesome Dove, and the like—but it’s not something I’ve actively researched, so it’s possible that somebody with a little more knowledge than myself might think this was horribly inaccurate. I don’t think it is, but there’s always the possibility.
At any rate, each episode focuses on two main points: the person and event, and the various technologies involved such as spurs, saddles, and modified chuck wagons. The introduction to the episodes mention how we can find the truth by examining the artifacts the cowboys left behind, and I do find this statement a bit misleading considering that when the episode pulls back to talk about these “artifacts” the show really only gives general details about where the item came from and how it was used by everyone, not just the particular person the episode focuses on. Besides, wouldn’t better clues come from the actual historic records such as bills of sale, land deeds, court records, even newspaper accounts? I suppose it’s a minor flaw in an otherwise good show, but the illogic of it bothered me. It just didn’t seem like proper historical methodology.
My nitpicking aside, I enjoyed watching this series and actually wished that it had been a little longer. There are only six episodes on this two-disc set: “The Real Lonesome Dove,” “The Real McCoy,” “The Real Billy the Kid,” “The Real Wyatt Earp,” “Range War,” and “Frontier Hitman.” I’m not sure why there are so few episodes in the series given that there is plenty more out there for them to explore (I think an episode devoted to the “real” Doc Holiday would be fascinating); hopefully there will be more in the future.
Each episode is presented in fullscreen with the audio in Dolby Digital stereo. The production quality won’t necessarily wow anybody, but each episode looks and sounds fine with no problems in either the video or audio.
While I can’t say for sure that this series will be particularly interesting or enlightening to someone more knowledgeable, to the lay person like myself, this was fun and educational. Considering that there are only six episodes and no extra features, I don’t recommend buying this, but if you’re a fan of Westerns and the Old West in general I say it’s well worth renting. Until then, happy trails, friends.
A&E Television Networks presents Cowboys & Outlaws. Running time: 4 hours 42 minutes. Rated NR. Released on DVD: January 26, 2010. Available at Amazon.
